Blog

Sponges are chiefly marine invertebrate animals, characteristically having a porous skeleton composed of fibrous material. Four new species of killer sponges have just been discovered in the Pacific Ocean.

These killer sponges are related to the non-synthetic sponges that you are familiar with in your kitchen or bathroom. However, these new species don’t look like the household sponge that you are accustomed to, instead, they look more like ghostly plants that consist of twig-like structures covered with microscopic hairs. The hairs are packed with microscopic hooks that the hungry, flesh-eating sponges use to trap prey.

This identification of four new killer sponge species brings the total known number of carnivorous sea sponges in the northern Pacific region to 11. Thus far, while about 8,500 different sponge varities have been discovered in our Earth’s oceans, scientists have identified only 137 species of animal-eating sponges.